Outer Bounds: Fortune's Rising

by King, Sara

  But Anna had wheedled Joel into covering Magali’s ass, and now he was wandering off to kill himself. After he had tried to help as many eggers as possible, herself included.

  She had to do something.

  Still staring at the red-purple substance on her gloved fingertips, Magali again found herself wondering what her sister would have done in that situation.

  She wouldn’t care, Magali knew. She’d tell me to suck it up, and to let him go off and die alone. More nodules for us.

  Magali narrowed her eyes and got to her feet. She wasn’t Anna.

  * * *

  Joel grimaced at the lone Shrieker camped out in the middle of the chamber floor, cradling what was left of a clutch of nodules. The rest had been torn away by a black-market mowing machine, which had left more than half of the nodules broken and oozing, the tiny larvae inside writhing or dead.

  Joel felt irritation at that. Only a narrow-minded fool wasted nodules.

  Piled along the edge of the cave were clusters of dead Shriekers, drag-marks still puncturing the slime where they had been pulled across the chamber and dumped there.

  Beyond that, the beam of a flashlight bounced across the adjacent cave.

  Joel frowned at the pile of dead Shriekers. It was a novice’s trick, something to calm shredded nerves. He himself hadn’t killed any Shriekers for almost twenty years. Anyone with any experience would have realized that it would have been just as easy—and much less dangerous—to give them a distraction.

  Besides, only idiots killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. Especially if that goose was capable of producing a psychic scream in its death throes that would leave anyone within three hundred yards a drooling vegetable for the rest of their lives, if they survived at all. It just wasn’t smart.

  But then, Martin had never been smart.

  Joel gingerly began to move around the lone Shrieker. He was already feeling the fuzzy beginning of a Shrieker migraine. Anger? Loneliness, perhaps? Did Shriekers even feel these emotions? The general consensus was that they were just stupid beasts, barely above the level of a garden snail, but Joel wasn’t so sure. In all his years of smuggling, he’d developed a deep-rooted respect for the creatures, one that had kept him alive more times than he cared to count.

  The Shrieker tensed when Joel neared it.

  Despite his qualms, Joel considered shooting it. The Shriekers were already on high alert, and having its babies and companions lying dead in the muck around it certainly wasn’t going to make the creature more stable. But, when it went back to examining its ruined clutch, Joel decided if it had intended to Shriek, it would have done so already, when Geo’s goon was slaughtering its companions.

  Easing the rest of the way around the Shrieker, Joel found himself at the edge of the next cave, looking in at Martin.

  Geo’s goon was kneeling in the Shrieker mucus, plucking usable nodules from the belly of the mowing machine, tossing those that were broken or crushed into the slime behind him. He’d already filled four sacks, and was halfway through his fifth.

  Joel cleared his throat.

  Martin froze, and his big fingers started to reach for the gun sitting on the housing of the mower, next to the flashlight.

  Joel fired at the illegal Coalition pistol, putting a hole through Martin’s gun, the housing, and the mower’s engine. Sparks spat and sizzled from the mower’s internal workings, and the entire thing stopped humming and sputtered to a stop.

  Seeing that, Martin turned red and lunged to his feet. He shoved a finger in the mower’s direction and spewed an explosive series of threats and curses. Joel could tell they were threats and curses by the spit flying from Martin’s lips, and the animal look in his eyes.

  Now that he thought about it, Martin looked a lot like Geo. Give Geo some color to him, trim off a few hundred pounds of fat…

  A son, perhaps?

  Joel laughed, delighted. He would be able to get back at the petty old albino, after all.

  Martin quieted, his piggish nostrils flaring. He spouted another long string of words, this time lower, more dangerous.

  Yes, definitely a threat.

  Joel took a deep breath, wondering how he was going to handle this. The moment he’d seen Martin, he knew he would be down here for Harvest, and he also knew that Geo’s goon had a reasonable way out that wouldn’t have him hiking five bags of partially-crushed Shrieker nodules past the Nephyrs guarding the entrance.

  Joel pointed to one of the unmarked harvest sacks—the same any hunter could use to carry starlope meat from the mountains—and then mimed throwing it over his shoulder. Then he pointed at Martin and repeated the gesture, waiting expectantly.

  The albino’s son gave him a flat stare that did not need to be translated. To assist in Joel’s understanding, however, he gave Joel a cruel smile and, while uttering another low series of words, he drew the tip of his fat finger across his throat.

  Joel shot him in the foot.

  As the goon howled, Joel strode forward and kicked him over, so he was on his face in the muck. Then, foot in the middle of Martin’s back, the grip of the gun secured between his teeth, Joel used his good hand to start searching Martin’s pockets for some sort of map. Novices always had a map.

  When he found the wadded piece of paper, he grinned. Just four caverns away, marked with a bright red X, was the word SHIP.

  Joel only had a brief moment to enjoy the moment, however, before Martin’s bullish body began floundering, meaty arms struggling to get some sort of purchase beneath him. Then he was spinning under Joel’s grip, throwing off Joel’s balance, and, with only one working hand, Joel couldn’t keep him down.

  Within just a few horrible seconds, Martin had flipped completely over before Joel could once more get a hold on the gun. Martin smacked it out of his hand with a meaty fist and the weapon went flying. As Joel tried to scramble for the gun, the bigger man’s beefy hands were wrapped around his throat, the studded gloves biting into Joel’s neck. Suddenly, it was all Joel could do to breathe.

  Despite Joel’s efforts to pry Martin’s hands from his throat, the edges of his vision began to go black, until the smuggler’s sweaty, contorted brow and his piggish brown eyes were the only things he could see.

  Joel could feel himself sliding into unconsciousness.

  He could feel it, because his legs were going out underneath him. He slid to his knees beside the smuggler, unable to keep his muscles taut.

  A female voice came from behind him, sounding dim, like it was a good distance away. Martin’s hands loosened slightly. Joel sucked in a gasping breath, his vision still narrowed to a tiny, black-rimmed field.

  The voice sounded again, like it was coming from the bottom of a well.

  Martin’s fingers reluctantly slid from Joel’s neck.

  Gasping, Joel flopped away from him, crawling, sucking in breath after breath, his chest burning, his vision still dangerously narrowed to the slime between his fingers. Martin did not press his advantage, and when Joel was able, he looked up to see what had intervened.

  Magali was standing near the doorway, Joel’s gun in her hand. She looked confused.

  Behind him, Martin started talking, his voice low and soft. As he talked, he stood. Then the evil sonofabitch took a hobbling step towards her.

  Joel knew the bastard would wring her neck and screw her corpse, if Magali let him anywhere near her. He got up, even as Martin continued to speak in low, soothing sounds, and shoved him, hard, motioning at Magali to back up a pace.

  She didn’t move.

  Martin laughed and kept talking.

  Joel put his body between them, shoving Martin back a step. Martin looked at him, gave him a smile that made his insides feel sick, and continued to speak.

  Lying, Joel realized. Martin was lying to her. Telling her some story, some fabrication, and he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

  Joel glanced back at Magali. She was frowning, now. His heart began to thunder in his ears. He shook his he
ad emphatically, denying whatever Martin was saying, but Magali’s frown darkened. The barrel of the gun slowly slid from Martin, until it was hovering between the two of them, as if she couldn’t decide which one she wanted to shoot first.

  What’s he saying? Joel thought, panicking as Martin’s soft voice continued to fill the cavern. Martin gave him a self-satisfied look that left him cold, and the first traces of fury were beginning to tighten Magali’s face. Seeing that, Joel would have given anything to know what he was saying.

  And then, as the barrel of the gun turned to level on his chest, Joel knew.

  * * *

  “You are that Landborn girl, ain’t ya? The gal whose daddy disappeared a few years back? David Landborn? One hell of a legend, that guy. Everybody knew of him…him and his two girls.”

  Killer, Wideman giggled.

  “Don’t come any closer,” Magali snapped, when the enormous man took another step toward her, blood squishing up from the singed hole in his boot. He had the bulk of Patrick and Milar combined, and it scared her. He was a mod—he had to be. Nobody grew that big on their own.

  “Sorry, honey, sorry.” The man raised big hands in supplication. “Just thought we were friends, here.”

  “We aren’t friends,” she whimpered, keeping distance between them. “Back up.” She was running out of cavern to back into.

  “Maybe not yet,” the big man said, “But we could be.” He grinned, and it looked completely genuine. He did not back up.

  “Did you say he was…” Magali swallowed, unable to wrench the word ‘tortured’ from her throat. “What did he do to him?” Her gaze was focused on Joel, who had gone deathly still, looking paler and scareder than she’d ever seen him before.

  The big man snorted. “Who, Joel? Nothing.” Then his smile turned vicious. “Well, nothing, unless you count him letting your daddy’s name slip to the nasty Yolk runners he was double-crossing. Saved his own hide by trading his life for your daddy’s. The crime boss gave him the choice to give up his life or give up his Yolk source. What do you think he did? Squealed like a rabbit. Geo sent his guys out the very next day to find your daddy. Made him watch while they collapsed the mine on your poor mother—horrible accident, don’t you think?—and then took him out and tied him to a tree and slit his gut open for the tree-hares to eat while he screamed his lungs bloody.”

  Magali closed her eyes against tears. “You’re lying,” she whispered.

  She heard the big man take another step towards her. Her eyes snapped open and she stumbled back, her heel hitting the edge of the cavern wall. “Get back, goddamn it!” she shouted.

  The big man gave her a sad grin, completely ignoring the gun. “Lying?” The man shook his head. “Just look at Joel’s face and tell me I’m lying.” He gestured to the gray nature of the smuggler’s skin. “He would’ve said something before this if I weren’t.”

  “Joel’s been muted,” Magali said, feeling a wave of hope. “He can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  The big man gave Joel an unreadable look. “He can’t?”

  “No,” Magali said, “So just back up. I know Joel a Hell of a lot better than you do.”

  The big man laughed. “Oh, I doubt that. I’m a smuggler, girl. I don’t associate with the nicest of folk, and people like Joel, you get a couple beers in ‘em and they talk. Stories spread. Go to any bar and ask. Sad truth is probably everybody you talk to this side of the Snake’ll know what happened to your daddy, and why. Joel, the honorless little weasel he is, broke the Golden Rule of Yolk smuggling. He gave up his source, and his source paid with his life, and the life of his wife.” The man laughed. “Funny thing is, the skinny bastard named his ship Honor, and the guy flying it ain’t got a scrap of honor to save his soul. He’s a liar, a betrayer, and a cheat. I think that’s ironic.”

  Magali didn’t believe him. Despite his smile, there was something in the man’s eyes that reminded her of the way Colonel Steele’s gaze had felt as it oozed down her naked body. Or Anna.

  She shuddered when she thought of Anna.

  Still, he had known about her father. Even most of the people in Deaddrunk had thought her father had suffered a mining accident. Most of them never even suspected he was smuggling Yolk to buy weapons for Wideman’s war. For the big man to have known that her father had been part of the black market Yolk trade meant he had met her father, in some way or another.

  Magali looked at Joel. She knew that the black market Yolk trade was a dangerous business. Nephyrs killed suspected smugglers without even a trial. Her father had always done everything he could to keep his children and his wife as far from the actual illegal processes as possible. He had told her again and again that to breathe one whisper to the wrong person would bring men on both sides of the law to his doorstep with guns in their hands.

  Was Joel the one her father had been selling his Yolk to? Could that have been what happened to him, could that be why her mother had gone into the silver mines alone that night? A competitor found out about him and came to collect?

  She didn’t think Joel had the heart to kill anybody, and if the big man had claimed he had, she would’ve known he was lying. Even the guards, who had tried to kill him, were still alive and breathing when most people would’ve yanked the gun from her hand and put a beam through their skull.

  But give someone up? Betray him to save himself? When she looked, there was something in Joel’s eyes that hadn’t been there before. Fear…and guilt. Softly, she said, “Joel, did you hand over my father to the Yolk cartels?”

  He emphatically shook his head and made two cutting motions with his hand, pointing at the other man. Don’t believe him. He’s lying. For a moment, Magali believed him.

  Then she realized that, if Joel was innocent, he wouldn’t have had any idea what she was talking about. But, seeing his anguished face, she knew that he did know what she was talking about. He must have known this was coming since the first day he’d met her in the foreman’s chambers.

  “Of course he did.”

  She felt the big man move closer again and Magali stumbled sideways, almost slipping against the wall. “Stay back, please!”

  The smile grew on the man’s face, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Come on, now. You ain’t going to shoot anybody.” He took another limping step toward her, his hands up in supplication, a grin on his face. He reached out with one beefy hand, palm-up.

  Joel suddenly grabbed the collar of the man’s leather jacket and yanked him off his feet, into a backwards sprawl in the slime.

  The big man lunged upward in a snarl, the harmless grin vanished from his face as if a switch had been flipped. He punched Joel in the wounded leg, hard, and Joel crumpled. As Joel was falling, the big man got to his feet and kicked him in the face.

  Joel’s head snapped back and he went still. Oh my God, Magali thought, the barrel of her gun drooping slightly as she looked on in horror. He killed him. His face had fallen into a cluster of broken nodules, and for a moment, the reddish gore leaking from around the infant Shriekers made it look as if his face had been ripped apart. Then she noticed the shallow rise of his shoulders as his chest expanded. Once. Twice.

  Joel was alive, but barely.

  “Now where were we?” the big man growled. He brightened. “Oh yeah.” He wiped his bloody hand on the front of his shirt. He gave her an apologetic grin and he held out his hand. “My name is Martin.” He took another limping step toward her.

  Magali tore her gaze from Joel’s chest and once more leveled the gun on the big man. “I told you to back up!” Even to her ears, it sounded like more of a plea than a command.

  The big man’s brown eyes were hard. “A pretty thing like you wouldn’t shoot a friendly guy like me,” he said. He was still smiling, but it sounded as if it were a warning. He continued to move toward her, slowly.

  “Back!” she cried, working her way along the wall.

  “There’s no need for the gun, little girl,” Martin said. “We bo
th know you don’t know how to use it.”

  “I know how to use it,” Magali said, still backing along the wall. “I’m an expert marksman. My daddy trained me since birth.”

  Martin laughed. “Birth, huh?”

  “Birth,” she whispered. Her knees were shaking again, and her stomach was twisting with the urge to vomit.

  His eyes dropped to the gun for a moment and he seemed to consider that. “You’re an awful liar, kid. Your hand is trembling like an alchie who forgot his meds.” He took another step.

  “Colonists know all about how to shoot,” Magali blurted. “Gotta shoot starlopes to eat. Especially the town where I’m from. Everybody knows how to shoot in that town. Everybody.”

  His patronizing smile never left him. “Yeah, I hear you’re real good at shooting paper targets,” the man said, “But shooting a man isn’t the same as shooting a target, is it, dearie?” He took another step toward her, and another, his hands out in a peaceful gesture. His smile widened. “Besides. The way you’re holding that gun, I’d guess you’d never even shot a starlope before, have ya, kid?”

  And he was right.

  Though she didn’t respond, his confidence grew. “So you ain’t never killed nothin’ before, huh? Just cardboard and straw bales, is that it? That ain’t no way to start your career there, little girl. Shooting a man? I can tell you from experience it ain’t fun. Changes you forever.”

  “Please don’t,” she whimpered. “I hate guns. I don’t want to shoot you.”

  He tisked, the good-natured smile still plastered on his face. “I know you don’t. I can read people, dearie. I know what they call you. I know you ain’t a killer.”

  Magali’s heart clenched. She squeezed her eyes shut against tears.

  He continued to move closer, slowly. “So just put the gun down, darlin’. Okay? We both know you ain’t gonna use it. Just give me the gun and let Joel and I finish up our disagreement, okay girlie?”